Even the poor consolation which Mr. Goulburn thus hugged was disappointed, for Mr. Gallatin’s note neither accepted nor rejected the British offer to negotiate, but expressed a willingness to agree to do so only with the most emphatic reservation of all rights claimed by the United States. Mr. Goulburn was obliged to contemplate the abandonment of his last stronghold; he mildly wrote to Lord Bathurst, suggesting that all stipulations respecting the Mississippi and the fisheries should be omitted.[151]
After Mr. Gallatin had, with no little difficulty, succeeded in carrying his point, and after the usual delay consequent on the inevitable reference to London, an answer was returned on the 22d December. Somewhat to the discomfiture of both Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams, the Eastern and Western belligerents, this reply suddenly drew their war-chariots from under them. The British government was now more eager for peace than the American commissioners; it declared that it cared nothing about its proposed article by which the fisheries and the Mississippi were to be referred to negotiation, and would withdraw it with pleasure, so that the treaty might be silent on the subject. The practical result was that Mr. Adams’s view of the treaty of 1783 inevitably became the doctrine of his government, and that Mr. Clay was overset. Mr. Clay saw this, and was nettled by it; but Mr. Gallatin’s very delicate management, and the now clearly avowed desire of the British government to make peace, had clinched the settlement; further discussion or delay was out of the question, and three days later, on Christmas-Day, the treaty was signed.
Far more than contemporaries ever supposed or than is now imagined, the treaty of Ghent was the special work and the peculiar triumph of Mr. Gallatin. From what a fearful collapse it rescued the government, every reader knows. How bitterly it irritated the war-party in England, and what clamors were raised against it by the powerful interests that were bent on “punishing” the United States, can be seen in the old leaders of the London Times. What Lord Castlereagh at Vienna thought of it may be read in his letter of January 2, 1815, to Lord Liverpool: “The courier from Ghent with the news of the peace arrived yesterday morning. It has produced the greatest possible sensation here, and will, I have no doubt, enter largely into the calculations of our opponents. It is a most auspicious and seasonable event. I wish you joy of being released from the millstone of an American war.”[152] The peace was due primarily to the good sense of Lord Castlereagh, Lord Liverpool, and the Duke of Wellington; but there is fair room to doubt whether that good sense would have been kept steady to its purpose, and whether the American negotiators could have been held together in theirs, without the controlling influence of Mr. Gallatin’s resource, tact, and authority; whether, indeed, any negotiation at all could have been brought about except through Mr. Gallatin’s personal efforts, from the time he supported the mission in the Cabinet to the time when he took the responsibility of going to England. Sooner or later peace must have come, but there may be fair reason to think that, without Mr. Gallatin, the United States must have fought another campaign, and, Mr. Clay to the contrary notwithstanding, the position of New England and of the finances made peace vitally necessary. On that subject Mr. Gallatin’s knowledge of New England and of finance made him a wiser counsellor than Mr. Clay. Yet if Mr. Clay really had thought as he talked, he would not have crossed the ocean to assist in doing precisely what Mr. Gallatin’s policy dictated; he well knew that the United States could possibly win in the field no advantages to compensate for the inevitable mischief that another year of war must have caused to the government.
1815.
Be this as it may, the task done was done in the true spirit of Mr. Gallatin’s political philosophy and in the fullest sympathy with his old convictions. Stress of circumstances had wrested control from his hands, had blocked his path as Secretary of the Treasury, and had plunged the country headlong into difficulties it was not yet competent to manage. Gallatin had abandoned place and power, had thrown himself with all his energy upon the only point where he could make his strength effective, and had actually succeeded, by skill and persistence, in guiding the country back to safe and solid ground. He was not a man to boast of his exploits, and he never claimed peculiar credit in any of these transactions, but as he signed the treaty of Ghent he could fairly say that no one had done more than himself to serve his country, and no one had acted a more unselfish part.
After a furious parting quarrel between Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams, in which Mr. Gallatin again exercised all his tact to soothe the angry feelings of the two combatants, while he quietly threw his weight on Mr. Adams’s side, the commissioners separated, and he found himself free to follow his own fancy. As might be expected, his first act was to revisit his family and his birthplace; he took the road to Geneva.
Of this visit very little can be said. His letters to his wife during all the period of this stay in Europe have been lost, and their place cannot be supplied. No man, however, can go through the experience of returning to the associations of his youth, after more than thirty years of struggle like his, without sensations such as he would not care to express in words. He left only one allusion to the subject: he said that, as he approached Geneva, calm as his nature was, his calmness deserted him.
The citizens of his native town received him with the most cordial welcome; they were proud of him, and he was greeted with all the distinction he could have expected or wished. He passed a short time in renewing his relations with the surviving members of his family and with his old friends; then, departing again for Paris, he arrived there in season to witness the return of Napoleon from Elba, and to receive the information of his own appointment as minister to France in place of Mr. Crawford, who had decided to return home. In April he crossed the channel to England. He had not yet determined to accept the French mission, and in any case his family and his private affairs made a return to America necessary; meanwhile, he and his colleagues lingered, hoping to effect still further negotiation under their powers for a commercial treaty.
The following letter is a memento of his stay in Paris.
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT TO GALLATIN.